


make it easier

by maketea



Series: hotel suite/apartment superhero shenanigans [10]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bubble Bath, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maketea/pseuds/maketea
Summary: if ladybug can't be strong, chat noir will be, instead.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: hotel suite/apartment superhero shenanigans [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813561
Comments: 30
Kudos: 403





	make it easier

**Author's Note:**

> zzzzzz too sleepy to proofread enjoy

Hot water gushed from the tap. Ladybug watched, a hand on her cheek, knees folded up to her chin in the bathtub. She blinked. Steam and her own tears blurred her vision.

"I can't do this anymore," she said softly.

Chat Noir's fingers stopped tracing her spine. "Can't do what?"

Ladybug covered her face. He was still touching her skin. Though the tap muffled the sound of it, he must have been able to feel the shake in her breath.

"Hey." He sat up. The bath water sloshed against her hips before he wrapped his arms around her. Chat Noir buried his face into her damp hair. "Hey, honey, what can't you do?"

She pressed her legs tighter to her chest. Ladybug shrunk into herself, palms — hot and wet with tears — stuck to her face.

While she had enough sense in her to feel embarrassed, she apparently didn't have enough to get herself out of this mess. This was meant to be their night off. Chat Noir had been so excited to have an entire uninterrupted evening together, having booked a suite at the Grand Paris that came with rose petals on the bedspread.

A night for _them_. There they were in a rich, jasmine-scented bath with the glitter from an expensive bath bomb sticking to their skin, soft love ballads playing from the stereo across the bathroom, while Ladybug sat hunched over, crying.

The solid press of his chest on her back tensed up. "Are you breaking up with me?" he said.

Her voice came out strangled, and if it shocked her, she couldn't imagine what he must have thought of it. "Oh, God, no, nothing like that."

He relaxed, though his the muscles in his arms around her remained taut. "Oh. Thank God. That would've been an awkward breakup."

She wanted to laugh. Maybe if she laughed, she could wipe her eyes and lean back into his chest and continue with their evening like nothing happened. She could blame her tearfulness on her period coming up, or something. It worked with her parents, whenever the weight of everything would come crashing down on her after one poorly-made sweater and leave her crying over her sewing machine.

But she didn't laugh. Ladybug opened her mouth, and for the first time, couldn't make the most of what she had to rectify the problem. Her voice betrayed her; Ladybug sobbed.

"Oh— oh, no. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's clearly not the important thing here." He held her closer, tucking her head under his chin and hushing her. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to make it worse."

She wiped her eyes. Her arms were cold, but she couldn't put them back in the water without soaping up her fingers, and she didn't want to add stinging bath soak onto the list of things making her cry. 

"No, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to ruin our evening."

"You're not ruining anything." Gently, he took hold of her chin, but she slipped herself out of his grip, keeping her face out of his line of sight. "What's wrong? We can talk about it."

"Can we just forget about it?" she croaked. Ladybug twisted off the tap and made some attempt to return to her position against his chest. "I'm sorry, it's just—"

"Hormones?" he said. "You've used that one on me before. It doesn't work twice."

Ladybug sighed. Why had she even tried lying? Six years of partnership not only made her transparent, but made him confrontational, too.

"I'm not gonna force you to talk about it if you don't want to," he told her, tenderly scooping her hair away from her shoulder. He kissed it, and rested his cheek against her skin. "But I don't want you to keep it all to yourself because you think you're 'ruining' something."

Ladybug sniffled. She lowered her hands from her face, submerging her forearms into the bath soak. Glitter swam around her elbows. 

"I can't do this anymore," she said again, more matter-of-factly than before.

"'This'?"

"Being a superhero."

He froze. "What?"

She sniffled again. "I can't do this, Chat Noir."

More tears rose up her throat. Ladybug hiccupped.

"I can't keep fighting," she said. "I can't keep making excuses to my parents and my friends about why I have to leave in the middle of a get-together we had to plan _six weeks_ in advance for. I can't keep lying to my best friend when she asks why I can't see her brand new apartment. I can't keep fighting akuma after akuma after akuma while _nothing_ seems to be changing. I can't keep giving my all every single _fucking_ day just to have to do it all again."

She propped her hand up on the lip of the bathtub, clenching her fist. "I'm _tired_ . I can't keep waking up at three o'clock in the morning because someone slammed a door but I'm so afraid of an akuma attack happening I stay awake for the rest of the night. I can't keep lying in bed and begging my body to just _calm down_ because my heart is beating so hard I feel like I'm going to die.

"I just want to be normal. I—I want to take you home and introduce you to my parents. And I want to go on double dates with you and my best friend. I want to hear how it sounds when you say my name and I want to know how it feels to say yours. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and actually _want_ to wake up. I'm sick of staring at my ceiling and listening to my alarm clock and wondering whether it's even worth getting through the day anymore, if this is how my life is gonna be forever."

She was sobbing again, rubbing at her eyes. Yes, they stung with the bath soak, but Ladybug couldn't bring herself to care.

"I can't do this anymore," she wept, shrinking into herself again. "It's too much. I'm not strong enough."

She had said her piece. Ladybug caught her breath, trembling, while Chat Noir sat, stunned. The playlist of love ballads had ended, and started again from the beginning.

Chat Noir's hands slid up her body and went to her shoulders. He massaged them, then removed one to grab for the shampoo bottle on the side, open it, and squirt some into his palm.

For a while, he said nothing. He lathered her hair, pulling her into his chest, tilting her head back so the tears fell out of the corners of her eyes. The shampoo smelt sweet, and she melted into his touch. 

He wiped the suds off her forehead before they could drip too far down. "You don't have to be strong all the time," he said.

She choked back another bout of tears. "Then who will be?"

"I will." A portion of her hair resisted against his ministrations. Chat Noir stopped. He ran his fingers along her scalp until it reached her ear, then lovingly unwound her hair from her Miraculous. "I'll be strong when you can't be. That's what you've always done for me."

Ladybug swallowed hard. 

She hadn't felt strong in years. But there had been a time when she felt stronger than anyone.

They were only fifteen, back then, when Ladybug had simply hugged Chat Noir after a tough battle, and he had immediately begun to cry. 

He had told her, then — shaking and teary-eyed and clinging to her for dear life — that he hadn't been hugged in months. That his father barely looked at him anymore. That he had lost his mother a few years ago, and for some reason, it had all come flooding back when Ladybug had hugged him.

She had promised, then, that she'd be strong for him. She stroked his hair while he napped on patrols. She squeezed his hand whenever a parent reunited with their child after she threw her Miraculous Ladybug. She held him on secluded rooftops while he sobbed so hard he could barely get a word out, and told him that he didn't need to explain anything if he didn't want to. He just needed to know she was there.

Now, Ladybug squeezed her eyes shut. Chat Noir reached over with a slippery hand and wiped the tears on her cheeks.

"Being strong is hard," he said. "It's not fun. It's like having to hold up a dumbbell for as long as you can, even when it feels like your arms are about to break."

Ladybug blinked. Yes, it was that exactly. She had never analogised it so perfectly herself.

"But the thing is…" He unhooked the shower head behind him. He switched it on, and a steady stream of water licked down her back. "Nobody can hold up a huge dumbbell forever. You have to take breaks in between — cool off, drink some water, walk around, you know?"

Ladybug smiled. "You do a lot of weight lifting in your spare time?"

He laughed. "I have no idea how any of this works. I'm just guessing."

She laughed too, though it came out soggily.

"My point is, you can't be strong twenty-four seven. Nobody can. It's hard work. You have to take breaks. Take some weight off your shoulders. Make things easier for yourself, or let someone else be strong for you while you recuperate." With one hand, he shielded her eyes from the shampoo, while the other guided the shower head through her hair. "What is it that you have to do? We can work through it together, like we always have. You can leave anything difficult to me."

"It's not just a single thing," she said. "It's… it's everything— I can't do _any of it_ , and I feel so _stupid—"_

"Ssh, okay, let's not do that." He switched off the shower, then slipped his fingers into her hair instead. As he spoke, he massaged her scalp. "What's the biggest problem? What's making you most upset?"

She said it all in one breath, unfiltered, streaming out of her like the hot water from the tap. 

"I feel so alone," Ladybug said. "I feel so… so isolated. I'm always lying to people, always running away, always making up excuses. There's no one on my side in my normal life. It's always just me. Nobody is there to say it wasn't my fault that I missed my mum's birthday dinner because of an akuma attack, you know? Because nobody _knows._ I feel like I'm drowning in guilt every single day because I'm hurting so many people because I have no other choice, and there's no one in my normal life that completely understands where I'm coming from."

Chat Noir's fingers stopped. Ladybug hadn't caught up yet.

"I just want someone on my side," she said. "Someone who _knows_. Maybe that'll make it all…"

Ladybug stopped, too.

Slowly, she turned in his arms. She knew, from the look on his face, they were thinking the same thing.

"Maybe that'll make it all easier," she breathed.

"Ladybug, I…" He swallowed. "It's up to you."

"What's up to me?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Please say it," she whispered, almost overtaken by the love ballads on the stereo. "So I know we're on the same page."

Chat Noir pushed Ladybug's wet hair out of her eyes. He had shampoo on his fingers. 

"Do you want to know who I am?" he said.

Shock jolted through her body. She knew what he had been about to say, and yet nothing could have prepared her for it. 

For how real it was, all of a sudden. How not even a transformation phrase stood between their identities. They were skin-to-skin — his heart beat thrumming against her upper arm, his slick collarbone pressing into her shoulder. All that was left were two plastic masks she had ordered online. 

Beads of condensation had gathered around Chat Noir's mask. It looked slippery, with the skin around it wet with sweat and water droplets. If she placed her fingers on the edge of his mask, it would come away with no resistance. Ladybug had wrestled with belt buckles and shirt buttons and unyielding ties on Chat Noir since they had been eighteen years old. This would be the easiest thing she'd ever taken off him — and yet her hands trembled at the very idea.

"Yes," she said finally. "I do."

She sucked in a breath, as if her affirmative would drop their masks itself.

Chat Noir stroked her hip. "Are you sure?"

"I'm nervous," she said honestly. "It might be dangerous."

"I think… I think it's more dangerous to have you under so much pressure. What's the likelihood of Hawk Moth capturing one of us in comparison to you just… breaking down?"

A condensation bead rolled down his face. He was right. Even if she wanted to disagree, she couldn't — they had gone six years since their last close-call with Hawk Moth. They were older, now. Practiced. Maybe when her head felt a little less foggy, they could brainstorm any plans in the rare chance something _did_ go wrong.

They had always been good at problem-solving. That's why they always won.

That's what an identity reveal would be. A solution to a problem.

The tightness in Ladybug's chest loosened — the tightness that she had almost begun to think was a permanent fixture in her body. The love of her life no longer an entire identity away, but at the end of a phone call. At the end of a bus journey. At the end of her civilian fingertips with no uncomfortable plastic masks in between. Somebody she could fall back asleep holding onto at three a.m.. Somebody who could cover for her when she snuck off to transform. Somebody who could look over her shoulder and give his input on the transformation potions whenever they made her want to tear her hair out.

Somebody _on her side_. Somebody to lean against when things got too much.

"Okay," she said hoarsely. "Okay. I want to know."

"Okay." He smiled. "Ladies first?"

Ladybug gulped. Her hands were still trembling when she reached up to her mask. It slid against her skin, sweaty and damp. 

She took in a deep breath.

Then, she pulled it off her cheeks. 

She was glad she didn't do it while turned away from him, or she would have surely smacked the mask back on before he could see. But like this, with her face risen to meet his, he saw exactly who she was as soon as she had made that final decision.

"Oh," he breathed in wonder. "Oh… you're…"

"Marinette," she said, a little awkwardly. Introductions were not her strong suit — let alone done while naked in a bathtub. "We met a few times when we were younger."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah— no, I mean— we know each other more than that."

Marinette steadied herself on one of the safety handles on the tub. "We do?"

Chat Noir nodded.

He shifted his mask aside.

And suddenly, Adrien was cuddled up to her in the bath.

Marinette didn't recognise him, at first — not with his messy, water-darkened hair and the flush on his cheeks. She half expected herself not to recognise him before the mask came off, anyway, but then she did, and then she was crying again.

"Hi," he said, just as awkward as she had been. "It's me."

"It's you!" she sobbed, and flung her arms around him.

He held her as she wept, chuckling in a way that was so _Adrien_ she struggled, for a moment, to conflate the two boys in her head.

Chat Noir was Adrien.

He had been the one to wordlessly hold her bag for her while she fretted over all her ring binders. Had slipped two euros into her pocket when she was short on change and thought she hadn't noticed. Had walked her back home after they both wrung themselves out at the library because she didn't want to be by herself so late at night.

She had never been alone. He had always been there, right beside her, looking after her in that quiet way of his.

Marinette pulled back, grabbed his face, and kissed him. He slipped against the bathtub, and she had to rearrange her legs, but they kissed nonetheless, holding each other as tight as they could without toppling into the water. 

Goosebumps prickled along her damp back. Adrien ran his hand up her spine and into her hair. He tilted back her head and kissed her chin, the underside of her jaw, her throat. She held onto him tighter.

"I love you," she said softly.

He lifted himself up. Adrien cupped Marinette's face. He wiped her tears, and rubbed at the lines the plastic mask had dug into her cheeks.

"I love you more," he said. "Thank you for letting me be there for you."

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: rosekasa


End file.
